Frieze London, 2024: Lucía Pizzani
Cecilia Brunson Projects has been invited to present new works by Lucía Pizzani at Frieze London, as part of Pablo José Ramírez's curated section, Smoke. This new themed section spotlights ceramic works that explore diasporic and indigenous histories. Bringing together international artists at the forefront of the medium today, whose practices draw upon pre-colonial traditions to use clay in expanded forms, Smoke presents ceramics as one of the most impactful aesthetic forms in contemporary art.
The presentation coincides with the publication of Lucía Pizzani's first monograph, edited by Natalia Valencia Arango and including contributions from Nicolas Bourriaud, Lisa Le Feuvre, Lucia Pietroiusti and Jesús Torrivilla. Copies will be available from our stand at Frieze London.
Since 2013, Pizzani has collaborated with El Cercado, a pottery workshop on the Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, a village where pre-Hispanic ceramic traditions are still in practice. For Frieze, Pizzani will present new works produced this summer at a residency at El Cercado, using these ancestral methods. On the Isla de Margarita, clay is extracted from local deposits and fired on an open bonfire kiln. The rising smoke leaves its markings the clay, considered to capture the spirit of the community.
Pizzani will also present new Flora Totems, her largest ceramic works to date. Sites of cultural convergence, they are made from English clays and imprinted with plants such as corn and eucalyptus, as Pizzani invokes the histories of flora both native and imported to South America. These anthropomorphic, guardian-like sculptures reflect Pizzani’s tendency to identify spirit-like imagery within natural forms, exploring concepts of interconnectivity across plant and animal worlds.
Pizzani’s research-based practice, informed by her studies in conservation biology and her involvement in Venezuela’s environmental movement, is concerned with the intertwining narratives of natural and human histories. In their material makeup, the works presented all hold stories of migration: of plants and their products, cultural practices, and the artist’s own migration from Venezuela to London.
Frieze London, Regent's Park
Stand S04
9 - 13 October, 2024
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Making Connections Through Clay at Frieze London
In a new section, Indigenous and expatriate artists explore land loved, lost and left behind in a medium well suited to the task: ceramics.Ray Mark Rinaldi, New York Times, October 3, 2024 -
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